Scientists Discover New Ways To Help Victims Of Paralysis

What do pigs and spiders have to offer accident victims suffering paralysis from peripheral nerve damage? They may hold the key to repairing damaged nerves.

Far too quickly, a serious mishap can bring about seemingly irrevocable nerve damage in a person's body that could lead to partial or full paralysis. If the nerve trauma is severe enough, that person can be fully paralyzed for the rest of their life, with little to no hope for recovery.

A recent artificial nerve graft procedure could offer hope to the many thousands of accident victims considered paralyzed following a peripheral nerve injury. A peripheral nerve injury is damage to any nerve located outside of the brain or spinal cord (the central nervous system, or CNS).

Can the limitations of current nerve graft treatments be overcome?

Right now scientists are able to utilize artificial nerve grafts in order to repair damaged peripheral nerves, but this treatment has many drawbacks. Current suturing methods will not work with these artificial nerve grafts if the damaged nerves are greater than a couple millimeters apart, or if any side of the nerve must be stretched to attach itself. If a damaged nerve's endings are not close enough to be sewn together, surgeons can use nerve grafts from elsewhere in the patient's body or from a donor, but these procedures are tricky and can have unacceptable side effects.

Unfortunately most peripheral nerve injuries resulting from traumatic accidents possess nerve separation greater than a few millimeters, a new approach is required. Recently however, researchers have had some success rejoining damaged nerves using synthetic nerve grafts.

Synthetic nerve grafts pave the way for "natural" grafts spun from spider's silk.

Following numerous experimental surgeries, researchers have learned that synthetic nerve grafts have their limitations as well, chiefly because of the human body's high rate of rejection of synthetic implants. These challenges have pushed researchers to find a more "natural" way to encourage nerves to regrow over a distance of several centimeters. In fact, a German surgical team led by Peter Vogt at the Department of Plastic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery at Hannover Medical School recently made significant advances with "natural' materials of their own: pig veins and spider's silk.

The German study, recently published in the journal PLoS One, details how Vogt and his surgeons were able to use grafts made from small pigs' veins filled with spider silk to regrow nerves separated by 6cm. This procedure was a success when performed on sheep, but human trials have yet to be conducted.

The results, however, were very promising, and all the markers of a successful nerve graft were present (in technical terms, Schwann cells had grown along the graft, myelination had occurred, and sodium channels formed appropriately). Not only that, but the surgeons found that once the nerves grew back together, the spider's silk connecting them appeared to have dissolved completely away, leaving not a trace.

There is a great deal of work yet to be done, but now traumatic accident victims suffering from peripheral nerve damage can hope that they may one day be able to regain control and feeling in their limbs according to a leading Houston neck injury attorney.

About PLoS One

PLoS One is an international, open-access, peer-reviewed, online scientific and medical journal launched in December 2006 by the Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS One accepts original research articles from any scientific or medical discipline. The journal published over 6,700 scientific and medical articles in 2010, making it the largest journal by volume in the world.

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